Sweet smell of success: scents that sell

Last year more than 530 scents were launched on to the Australian market. With such fierce competition how does a fragrance lure our attention and finally grab our cash? Erin Whitty investigates.

Every week there’s a new one gleaming from a department store counter, coaxing consumers to buy into the slick packaging, beautiful faces, and promise of instant glamour. For the last ten years thousands of fragrances have flooded the market, while big brands have turned themselves inside out for recognition, hoping to secure a spot on the fragrance map. So how do the big, and the not so big, scents get themselves plucked from the pack?

A different approach
Elizabeth Arden’s first Britney Spear’s fragrance, Curious, made a huge impact on the market. It was one of the most successful perfume launches in the last five years, selling more than 100,000 bottles in its first year alone. Of course, Britney’s ready-made fan base helped the coup, but it was the company’s non-traditional marketing route that really caused the sensation.

Elizabeth Arden’s goal was to bring the star closer to her audience. Because the perfume’s elusive target market - 16 to 25 year old young women - typically watch less than two hours of television a day, it made a limited print/TV campaign unlikely to maximise results. With a nod to the technology-savvy generation it was targeting, Elizabeth Arden instead chose to kick off the campaign with an online angle, intended to generate awareness pre-launch. It was the brand’s American advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners who first set out to “exploit the power of the web, Britney herself, and teens’ love affair with mobile phones to create an engaging media experience,” says associate media director Joshua Spanier.

In October 2004 Elizabeth Arden launched an interactive website for Curious (curiousBritneySpears.com.au), and followed up with a companion site for the second scent in line, Fantasy (fantasyBritneySpears.com.au), in 2005. Both sites lead the browser into Britney’s magical dream world. The story of Fantasy unfolds along with the pages of a virtual book. The site offers ring tones, screensaver downloads, love games and free samples to order. Arden also set up Club Curious, opening its doors to 600 girls for The Ultimate Girls Night Out, where Ricki-Lee Coulter of Australian Idol fame rocked about onstage while Channel V hosts covered the event live.

With Myer heavily supporting the brand in store, Curious sales went off. Realising the potential of the Britney-obsessed market, Myer repeated its heavy point of sale strategy with the launch of Fantasy. Australia was the most successful Britney fragrance launch worldwide on a per capita basis.

New beginnings
Of course the hype surrounding a fragrance alone isn’t enough to propel its success. The quality of the jus or perfume, bottle design and packaging all play an important role.

Estée Lauder’s Pleasures has all of these successful ingredients and as such has remained in a solid position on the charts for the last 10 years. But even if it has been a good performer in the past, a brand needs to stay current and on the radar in order to continue to succeed in the fast-paced perfume market. To celebrate Pleasures’ 10th anniversary, Estée Lauder relaunched the perfume with Gwyneth Paltrow as its ‘face’ and a new limited-edition bottle, designed by famed fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo. 

While Estée Lauder had to spend a considerable amount to lure Gwyneth, the company felt her polished, upper-crust image was perfect for the brand. “She is aspirational and stylish while being grounded, family orientated and approachable,” says Aerin Lauder, senior vice president of Estée Lauder’s global creative directions division. The campaign was shot by one of the world’s top fashion photographers, Mario Testino, and the resulting beautiful pictures beamed from magazine pages and television sets across the globe.  Tina Cooke, brand manager at Estée Lauder, says the company “noticed an immediate spike in sales as soon as the advertising and in store collateral was seen.”

Put the advertising together with the new Ruben Toledo packaging and you have created a new buzz around a familiar brand. And consumers are clearly responding - the Pleasures franchise rose by 34 per cent over the Christmas period alone.

Niche marketing
However launching a successful scent isn’t just about big budgets. Cosmax is a medium-sized brand developer with a handful of clients. The company prides itself on its close relationship with its brands, retailers and ultimately, with its customers. Cosmax cuts though the blur of big campaigns with small but memorable ideas. For example, Narciso Rodrigues for Her launched with advertisements in targeted magazines, but Cosmax also used an innovative sales tool – rather than handing out scent cards, scented ribbons were tied on the wrists of shoppers. This meant the fragrance remained with the shopper until she took it off.

Another clever in-store idea from Cosmax was to have male models parading around in kilts at key Myer and David Jones stores, for the launch of Gaultier 2. And on another attention-seeking mission, the company sent out a squad of scooter ads for Burberry Brit. The areas chosen were densely populated with the core demographic, 25 to 35 year olds, who looked up from their lattes to take in the show of heavy scooter traffic.

It’s likely that consumers will continue to display a seemingly insatiable appetite for new fragrances, while companies will employ ever-ingenious strategies to sell perfumes to us. Over the next year we’re bound to see a handful of successes but many more will fail to gain our loyalties and simply turn to dust. What we can be sure of is that companies will continue to do what they do best – pit themselves against each with newer and cleverer marketing strategies in the ongoing hunt for our hard-earned dollars.

« go back